Tuxedo Mark: Gah, this is so frustrating. Red Sonja and Vampirella Meet Betty and Veronica #11-12 have been pushed back again. Originally scheduled for May 27, #11 will now come out on July 1 and #13 on July 29.May 21, 2020, 01:30:59 pm

Tuxedo Mark: Wow, the Betty and Veronica: The Bond of Friendship OGN came out last Tuesday.May 19, 2020, 01:29:05 pm

ASS-P: The funny thing is that we have this remaining K-Mart here...and we had none of them when I was here in the 20thbCentury! We had a similat, but regional, chain that was only in New York and Connecticut I think, called Caldor's, they covered the same portion of the market. We had expensive. sorta hi.May 17, 2020, 02:07:57 am

ASS-P: I grew up with a big Sears near me here,,,and it is still there! How many full-fledged Sears stores are lefMay 17, 2020, 02:01:55 am

ASS-P: ......The last K I was in before this (which still had ACP digests), in Watsonville, CA, which I left six-ish months ago (the area of) is still there!!!!!May 17, 2020, 01:43:24 am

ASS-P: ...lie in bed...Perhaps I can go there later.May 17, 2020, 01:40:33 am

ASS-P: ...I noted with interest that oné of those K-Marts is less than 2 miles from where I live in bed now.May 17, 2020, 01:37:52 am

ASS-P: Westchester County is part of the New York City metro area but when I speak of it I'm speaking of Westchester, not NYC, Manhattan of " the bouroghs ".May 17, 2020, 01:35:20 am

ASS-P: ...Thank you# Yeah, 50-something, says Wiki. The whole operatic death scene of Sears had stopped getting media attention recently and likewise I'd heard of the big I'd status little if any after hearing of a plan pushed for by Lampert's creditors that would've closed down both K-Mart and Sears...May 17, 2020, 01:21:47 am

Tuxedo Mark: My Walmart has them. As for Kmart, there are only 50 left in the entire country (according to their website). Maybe even less.May 16, 2020, 11:19:14 pm

ASS-P: Bing back the link to the comic strip!May 16, 2020, 11:12:59 pm

ASS-P: I am now living in Westchester County, New York, which is my hometown area.May 16, 2020, 11:12:12 pm

ASS-P: That Wal-Mart didn't carry the DC Giants either. When they first came out, I saw them there, and other " gimmick/stunt "-packaged issues. I read that some Targets were going to carry the DC Giants but I haven't seen any at any Target where I've been.May 16, 2020, 11:10:53 pm

ASS-P: I went to a Wal-Mart-Mart recently and saw no digests, is what I meant.May 16, 2020, 11:06:03 pm

The Black Hood #3"The Nobody Murders, Part 3": Where The Nobody goes, death follows! But Greg Hettinger, a.k.a. The Black Hood, has no choice but to trail the psychotic assassin all the way across the United States, hoping to stop him before the body count climbs any higher. Greg steels himself for the worst--but nothing can prepare him for the shock waiting for him back in Philadelphia... I know what you're thinking. This is the third issue in a four-part arc. Meh, right? WRONG. This is the issue Black Hood fans are going to be talking about for a long time. Don't miss it!

Archie #17Cheryl Blossom's unleashed on Riverdale, creating chaos and tumult at her whim! Only Veronica can stop her--but how will she get back from her Swiss boarding school in time to save her friends?

Josie and The Pussycats #4The Pussycats' careers really start to take off as they head off to Rome for glitz and glamour! But what happens when a gang of diamond thieves bursts onto the scene? And will Josie and Alan M's dynamic sparkle under the heat and pressure of life on the road? Or will Josie's hard-as-diamonds ambition CUT THEM ALL TO RIBBONS?! Find out in Issue 4, "THREE CATS BY A FOUNTAIN."

Jughead #13Reggie has won KING FOR A DAY! And it turns out his first act as King is to demand... that everyone else to form a band with him? Okay that's actually not so bad; I was expecting way worse from Reggie. Wait, never mind, I'm getting word that DESPITE this very enjoyable and conflict-free premise, when Jughead plays around with the new music video for "The Reggies" and accidentally uploads an altered and embarrassing clip to the internet, everyone becomes enraged at our favorite crown-wearing hamburger-loving pal! Even Betty, and she's the greatest! She doesn't get mad unless it's really important! ANYWAY: Jughead will face CONSEQUENCES, but at least they'll be interesting AND HILARIOUS to read about!

Reggie and Me #3In the third installment of this five-issue miniseries, everyone thinks they know Big Moose. They're wrong. Determined to rid himself of both Moose and Archie, Reggie exploits his new "friendship" with the big guy to learn, "The Secret Life Of Moose Mason!" Reggie uncovers surprising truths about Moose's family and his troubled past. He discovers the real reason why Midge is so devoted to Moose. He exposes the big guy's hopes, dreams and fears. Teemed with his beloved dog Vader, Reggie begins to plant the seeds that will eventually lead to Moose and Archie's expulsion from Riverdale High.

Riverdale #1From Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and the writers of the new CW series Riverdale comes the first issue of the MUST-READ, brand new, ongoing comic series. Set in the universe of the TV series, the Riverdale comic offers a bold, subversive take on Archie, Betty, Veronica, Josie & the Pussycats and their friends, exploring small-town life and the darkness and weirdness bubbling beneath Riverdale's wholesome facade. Features interior art by up-and-coming artist Alitha Martinez (Black Panther).

Archie Comics Super Special #8Get in on the ground floor with the quarterly Archie Super Special! Join in on the fun and adventure in the town of Riverdale! Follow the hilarious antics of the lovable goofball, Archie Andrews, and the rest of his pals and gals! This magazine features the greatest stories from the Archie vault, plus creator spotlights, the latest news and much, much more!

Archie Jumbo Comics Digest #276Get ready for DOUBLE the laughs and DOUBLE the fun in this newest installment of Archie JUMBO comics digest featuring an ALL NEW LEAD STORY! In "Dear Fake Diary," Archie creates a fake diary just to see if Veronica to would read it. As he plants outrageously fake stories, he watches Veronica struggle to maintain her composure!

Archie 1000 Page Comics Compendium (TR)Get ready for the biggest collection EVER of the best and brightest stories Archie Comics has to offer! In this edition of the ARCHIE 1000 PAGE COMICS series, get ready unending fun, laughter and entertainment with Archie & his pals 'n' gals! You'll enjoy this compendium of classic comics! Everything's Archie in the largest Archie collection series EVER--offered at an incredible value price!

Archie's Coloring Book #1Get creative with Archie and his pals 'n' gals! Now you have the chance to color all of your favorite Archie characters! You can give Archie's jalopy a paint job or personally style Betty and Veronica's outfits. Plus, each image has an intricate background pattern to add to your color experience. The possibilities are endless and the fun never stops!

Archie's 75th Anniversary Digest #6Celebrate Archie's 75th anniversary in a special way with this commemorative digest! In this jam-packed issue, Jughead and Archie take the spotlight! Get ready for a whole lot of hilarious stories as well as bonus art pages and fun intros from writers, artists and fans alike. Each anniversary digest is a special collector's item for every Archie fan!

Betty & Veronica Comics Double Digest #251Join the world-famous Betty & Veronica for some fabulous fun and fantastic fashion in this comics double digest featuring an ALL NEW LEAD STORY! In "Give My Regards to Brigitte," songstress Brigitte Reilly makes her Broadway debut--but a rude Veronica in the audience creates a scene that will be tough for Brigitte to overcome!

Josie and The Pussycats 80-Page Giant Comic #1This GIANT-SIZED collection features some of the best, classic stories with the musical mavens themselves, Josie and the Pussycats, headlining! Starting with their first appearances and going in chronological order, it's a perfect introduction to the characters for fans who enjoy the new Josie and the Pussycats comic series as well as the girls' on the CW's Riverdale as well as an ideal collection for classic Archie fans.

Jughead & Archie Jumbo Comics Digest #25Archie and America's favorite couch potato, Jughead, are here to bring you hours of entertainment in this JUMBO-sized comics digest, featuring a BRAND NEW LEAD STORY you won't want to miss! In "Child's Play," Archie and Jughead get a gig playing music on a local kids' show. Unfortunately, two lovely assistants on the show distract Archie, showing kids that triangles are not just for geometry!

World of Archie Winter Annual #66There's a whole world of Archie comics out there, and you can find some of the best and most hilarious winter-themed stories right here! Check out OVER 190 pages of fun, with a BRAND NEW LEAD STORY! In "Me, Myself and I," Reggie decides to write his memoir and enlists Betty to help him. When he realizes he doesn't have much to write about, he gets creative...very creative...

Sonic Super Special #14The SONIC SUPER SPECIAL MAGAZINE is back and here to give you the world of Sonic the Hedgehog comics as you've never seen it before! Collecting the best in comic stories, special features and exclusive articles on the latest and greatest in the world of the Blue Blur! This is a title no true blue Sonic fan should be without!

Sonic the Hedgehog #292EVERYTHING CHANGES when SONIC and friends go down their "Branching Paths": The Shattered World Crisis is behind us, and the 25th Anniversary was well celebrated! So what's next for Sonic and his friends? That's up to them to decide! Sonic is racing around Westside Island on a mission--but for whom? And while Sonic's away, each of his friends make decisions that will plot the course of their lives. Don't miss out on the beginning of a whole new era of Sonic stories! Featuring cover art by Sonic comics veteran Tracy Yardley and a "Epic Movie Poster" variant by T. Rex!

Sonic Universe #95It's SONIC's SUPER TEAM, the "FREEDOM FIGHTERS": They've been Sonic's closest friends in the comics for years! Now it's their time to shine! Antoine takes the stage, traveling to his homeland to find some closure to his past. But he and Sonic find a new foe in the empty halls of Castle D'Coolette, and the beginning of a mystical new adventure! Featuring cover art by jammin' Jamal Peppers and a "Team Blast" variant by Lamar Wells!

I love Archie #17 all 3 of covers look great. I like Jughead #13, Derek's cover & the one where the gang outside of school. Reggie & Me #3 only have 2 nice covers, The main one & Thomas Pitilli's. The one with Betty & Veronica & Reggie is actually ugly. Betty & Veronica look terrible. RiverDale #3 only has one good cover the main cover with all the kids. I can't wait for the coloring book.

I like Tula's cover for Archie although I'm not really as excited about variant covers as I used to be because this series is losing my interest. The art in the last issue #14 was bad again after #13 being a nice respite from the previous art team. It just looked hurried, like they didn't have enough time to smooth the pencil marks and the inking was bad.

Lopresti's cover for Archie #17 looks very 80's. And Cheryl looks like the "attractive teacher" and older than everybody else.

I like the Josie diamond cover. On Anwar's B cover, the inking in their faces is too heavy handed.

Jughead I'm not that into since Sabrina's gone but I'll probably still read it. Same for Reggie. I will read it but not buy it.

Riverdale I will check out because I like the variant covers Alitha Martinez has done. Below I like the covers where Veronica is wearing the fur coat and the black Josies.

I could've sworn there was a Riverdale one shot with a whole bunch of other covers. What happened to that? Is this new Riverdale a miniseries or ongoing?

Yay. Return of the Super Special Magazine. Hopefully they will have more themed ones like Christmas.

The Josie 80 pager I'll get just because it's Josie even though they are reprinting the first appearance AGAIN...grrr.

As far as digests, I'll probably stick to Betty and Veronica. Maybe WOA if it has a lot of snow/wintery themed stories.

I wonder when these brand new lead stories will run out? How many more are left? When does ACP plan to stop publishing brand new Classic Archie stories and possibly the digests as well?

As long as the digests continue to make a decent profit, I doubt if Archie will stop them. However, it wouldn't bother me that much if they did stop making the digests if they no longer had new stories in them. I'd probably keep buying them even if they were all reprints because I have a full set of digests, but maybe I'd eventually decide to stop.

I don't know... what do you think it means, that the solicitation copy for the digests had (for the past six months or so prior to the solicitations for January) become ambiguous about whether or not the issue contained a NEW lead story, or was at least soft-pedalling the use of the word "new"... but NOW they're making it very clear, practically trumpeting the fact loud and clear that the digests all have new lead stories? Do you think that indicates "the last hurrah" before they discontinue new stories in the digests? Maybe, but it seems to me the opposite, that they seem to recognize that as a major selling point in writing the solicitation copy. Desperate to be noticed because of slipping sales? As far as "running out" of new stories goes, well they'll run out whenever they stop telling Dan Parent to write & draw new 5-pagers. He can easily handle the 20 pages a month or so required to supply the six titles with new 5-page lead stories. Their inventory of older, non-DP unpublished stories must be getting pretty thin at this point.

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on November 19, 2016, 08:40:28 pmI don't know... what do you think it means, that the solicitation copy for the digests had (for the past six months or so prior to the solicitations for January) become ambiguous about whether or not the issue contained a NEW lead story, or was at least soft-pedalling the use of the word "new"... but NOW they're making it very clear, practically trumpeting the fact loud and clear that the digests all have new lead stories? Do you think that indicates "the last hurrah" before they discontinue new stories in the digests? Maybe, but it seems to me the opposite, that they seem to recognize that as a major selling point in writing the solicitation copy. Desperate to be noticed because of slipping sales? As far as "running out" of new stories goes, well they'll run out whenever they stop telling Dan Parent to write & draw new 5-pagers. He can easily handle the 20 pages a month or so required to supply the six titles with new 5-page lead stories. Their inventory of older, non-DP unpublished stories must be getting pretty thin at this point.

I think/believe/reckon ACP realizes the need to have new stories or at the very least the idea of new stories being created in the "classic" look, for the digests to have some relevancy to the casual reader(=sales). I don't think the material offered can be perceived as "old" and be successful at the retail level.

As for "desperate to be noticed"? I'm pretty sure that's been the company motto for at least the last half decade.

Same here. Even with the same creative team as for issues #9-11 (the ones guest-starring Sabrina), I'm just not as interested any more. The two issues that preceded Sabrina (#7-8) looked good art-wise but the story was dull. I don't have all that much interest in Reggie as a solo star of his own series, but I'm curious to read it more for the fact that Tom DeFalco is writing it than for any other reason.

It's the first issue of an ongoing series, and it says so in the solicitation copy. Which would presumably make the other #1 (the one that has a Dan Parent variant cover, among others) from last month's solicitations just a one-shot special. No idea as far as what might be the difference in contents. I'll take a wild stab at it and guess that the one-shot special's contents are a hastily-thrown-together mishmosh of excerpts of scenes from previously-released New Riverdale comic book issues.

Super Special was originally a quarterly, and ALL of the issues were seasonally-themed. Besides the Christmas issue, there was one for Valentines Day/Spring, Summer, and Fall. If you check past issues, you'll see the season's name highlighted somewhere on the cover. Here's hoping that ACSS resumes the quarterly schedule, but this new cover for ACSS #8 doesn't seem seasonally-themed in any way. Maybe they're hedging their bets in case there's a delay in shipping this one on time, because one of the problems with a seasonally-themed quarterly was that if it doesn't come out ON TIME, then the season-geared contents are useless.

Yes, it gets a little tedious that it sometimes seems like the only Josie story that ever gets spotlighted is the first appearance of the Pussycats, just as it gets a little annoying that if there's a Sabrina reprint somewhere outside of the B&V digests, odds are that it will be that first Sabrina story from MADHOUSE #22.

BUT, did you notice THIS in the solicitation copy?? >> "Starting with their first appearances and going in chronological order" << Of course by "their" they mean the Pussycats, not "Josie and Friends", so that would mean all of the stories that followed chronologically after the initial formation of the Pussycats. Still pretty good, and worth having that first story again now, if it's appearing at the beginning of a chronological reprint.

I wonder when these brand new lead stories will run out? How many more are left? When does ACP plan to stop publishing brand new Classic Archie stories and possibly the digests as well?

Yeah, I think what happened there where they're suddenly practically shouting the fact that all of the digests have a NEW LEAD STORY, is that they realized that the generic solicitation copy that they usually use for any kind of reprint book wasn't doing any good for selling digests to anybody. The majority of their 8-12 year old readers are probably not (or only vaguely) aware of which stories are new, and the parents buying them for them certainly don't care, and aren't reading any solicitations for upcoming comics in the first place. The ONLY people who care whether the digests have new stories are the older fans who buy them online or through comic shops, or digitally, and they're the ONLY ones besides retailers reading the solicitations.

Super Special was originally a quarterly, and ALL of the issues were seasonally-themed. Besides the Christmas issue, there was one for Valentines Day/Spring, Summer, and Fall. If you check past issues, you'll see the season's name highlighted somewhere on the cover. Here's hoping that ACSS resumes the quarterly schedule, but this new cover for ACSS #8 doesn't seem seasonally-themed in any way. Maybe they're hedging their bets in case there's a delay in shipping this one on time, because one of the problems with a seasonally-themed quarterly was that if it doesn't come out ON TIME, then the season-geared contents are useless.

I was disappointed with the newest Super Special. Not nearly as many Christmas stories, more "snow" themed stories.

BUT, did you notice THIS in the solicitation copy?? >> "Starting with their first appearances and going in chronological order" << Of course by "their" they mean the Pussycats, not "Josie and Friends", so that would mean all of the stories that followed chronologically after the initial formation of the Pussycats. Still pretty good, and worth having that first story again now, if it's appearing at the beginning of a chronological reprint.

I doubt they'll publish everything Josie in order but one can hope. 80 pages is maybe 3-4 issues.

QuoteYeah, I think what happened there where they're suddenly practically shouting the fact that all of the digests have a NEW LEAD STORY, is that they realized that the generic solicitation copy that they usually use for any kind of reprint book wasn't doing any good for selling digests to anybody. The majority of their 8-12 year old readers are probably not (or only vaguely) aware of which stories are new, and the parents buying them for them certainly don't care, and aren't reading any solicitations for upcoming comics in the first place. The ONLY people who care whether the digests have new stories are the older fans who buy them online or through comic shops, or digitally, and they're the ONLY ones besides retailers reading the solicitations.

Yes but they don't make it very obvious on the covers that there's a new story inside.

There was a period of a few years there when they did use the cover to highlight a scene from the new lead story in the digests. That was (I believe) back when the line editor of the digests was Nelson Ribiero. Of course, back then the new lead stories were somewhere upwards of 10 pages to a full issue-length (for a floppy comic) story. You could tell that Ribiero cared about the digests and tried hard to make them interesting. Wish he was still editing them.

Nowadays the covers are all just generic/iconic images. Makes sense, I guess, since you can't really re-use a cover based on a 5-page story anywhere else, and ACP's all about recycling everything. I can't even remember the last time I saw a "gag" cover that's just a one-panel joke.

The Archie character names and likenesses are covered by the registered trademarks/copyrights of Archie Comic Publications, Inc. and are used with permission by this site. The Official Archie Comics website can be visited at www.archiecomics.com.